1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording device including an ink jet recording head in which a pressure chamber communicating with an ink ejection orifice is formed and a piezoelectric actuator is driven to change the pressure of ink in the pressure chamber, and a method of driving the ink jet recording head.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an ink jet recording device carrying an ink jet recording head is known. The known ink jet recording head is a liquid drop ejection head including a nozzle that ejects an ink drop, a liquid passage that communicates with the nozzle, and a pressure generating element that pressurizes ink in the liquid passage. A piezoelectric ink jet recording head using a piezoelectric device as the pressure generating element is also known. In this ink jet recording head, a drive pulse is supplied to the piezoelectric device and the piezoelectric device is driven to pressurize the ink in the liquid passage, so that an ink drop is ejected from the nozzle of the ink jet recording head.
In the piezoelectric ink jet recording head, some contrivance to stabilize the ejection of ink drops has been put for the purposes of maintenance of quality of images and others.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-017630 discloses an ink jet recording head in which a drive signal including multiple pulses is used so that the ink meniscus oscillations by a following pulse resonate with the ink meniscus oscillations by a preceding pulse and the ink drops ejected by these pulses are combined together during ejection.
In the ink jet recording head of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-017630, the impact positions of different ink drops are set to the same position by the use of the drive signal including the multiple pulses.
However, in the ink jet recording head of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-017630, if the number of pulses in the drive signal increases, the drive force to draw the meniscus increases excessively, the stability of ink drop ejection worsens, which results in an increase in the occurrence of misaligned ejection.